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* * *

In the car, Rafiel turned on the gas to start warming up the motor, so they could have heat soon.

"Rafiel, you can't go in there," Tom said. "You just can't."

"What do you mean, I can't?" Rafiel said. He reached for his phone, ready to call McKnight and ask him to come and process the scene.

"I meant, you can't." Tom looked very grave and slightly sad, which was very odd. If Rafiel didn't know him better, if Rafiel weren't sure this was one dragon who didn't go about pushing people into aquariums . . . 

"Why not?" he asked belligerently, while behind his rational mind, there ran thoughts he wouldn't even acknowledge, much less express, such as that dragons were aquatic creatures and that, as aquatic creatures, they might have some craving or other relating to water and pushing people in it. "You know it's my duty. I'm a policeman. If there's a body in there—"

"If," Tom said. "But beyond that, Rafiel, how are you going to tell them you heard about it? Who are you going to say informed you? And how are you going to say you got in?"

Rafiel tapped his fingers on the seat beside him. "But . . . time is of the essence," he said. "If there is a corpse, the more complete it is, the better the picture we will get. I mean, with the other ones, we don't even know if they were already dead when they were dumped in. And if we're dealing with shifters . . ."

"Yes. Of course. Perhaps an anonymous phone call? From one of the phone booths remaining, at a convenience store not on Fairfax?" Tom said. "One of the ones in the less busy areas? You can park at the back, or even farther away than that, and I can call and tell the police that there is a corpse in the aquarium. But it has to be to the central station. And I can't be identified."

"Yeah," Rafiel said, thinking. "So long as you don't stay on the line. They'll try to keep you on the line, so that they can get to you. You must not do that. Say your piece and run, and we'll get out of there fast." As he spoke, he thought of the convenience store to go to, on Fer de Lance Street. Between the local pioneer museum and a high school, the place was guaranteed to be deserted today.

He started off, headed that way, by the shortest route possible. "Well, at least what Old Joe says," Rafiel said, "sort of narrows it down to a female employee of the aquarium. I had a list of names of male employees to interview, but now . . ."

"No," Tom said, seriously. His features were set in such a way that they seemed to be carved, and a muscle played on the side of his face, giving the impression that he was about to have a nervous breakdown or something. "No, don't be so sure. What you're not thinking about, Rafiel, is that . . . well . . . Old Joe is not the best of witnesses, you know? He often . . ." He shrugged.

"He often what? Drinks? Does drugs?"

Tom shook his head, emphatically. "No. Nothing like that. At least, not that I know, and I think I'd have been able to tell. No. But he sometimes seems to be . . . not quite anchored to reality, if you know what I mean?"

Rafiel quirked an eyebrow. Sometimes he wondered how anchored to reality they all were. Considering what they were, and what they could do, it would be a wonder if they didn't sometimes feel unmoored and adrift. "Okay," he said.

He pulled up behind the store, on Fer de Lance. Actually behind and on the other side of the street, so that no one associated him with the phone call. There wasn't anyone around, in any case. The high school was closed, as was the pioneer museum. The rest of the block had the sort of empty feel that areas of town had that aren't flourishing. Like the last houses that had stood there had just been bulldozed, and they hadn't come up with anything else to replace them. The vacant lots didn't even have trees or proper plants. Just a sort of scrubby grass, now completely covered by snow.

"What are you doing?" he said, realizing Tom was throwing himself over the front seat and towards the back.

Tom, now fully in the back seat, gave him a grin. "Getting out on the driver's side," he said. "It's towards the school, and that's firmly closed, so no one will see me."

He had the hood firmly pulled over his head, and started to open the door, then stopped. "Do you have a quarter? Because I can't use a credit card on this. It would be way too obvious."

Rafiel grabbed a quarter from the drink holder, where he normally kept parking-meter fodder. He flipped it at Tom, who grabbed it out of the air. Good to know he was getting the feeling in his hands back.

He watched Tom get out of the car, very quickly, cross the high school campus semidiagonally, so that any witness would say he came out of the school. Sometimes—he thought, as he watched Tom cross the street and run, hell-bent for leather, towards the convenience store, so fast that he wasn't any more than a brief dark blur amid the snow—it was easy to believe the things Tom told him about his teenage years. Casual juvenile delinquence would impart that sort of knowledge. How to trick the police, 101.

In less time than seemed possible, for what he needed to do, Tom was back, coming into the car through the back door and saying, "Drive, drive, drive."

Rafiel drove. "Who answered?"

"I think just the receptionist or dispatcher, or whatever. She told me she would transfer me to someone else, but I hung up." He grinned at Rafiel, a feral grin, and leaned forward on the seat. "I grabbed the phone with my sleeve. And I wiped the coin before putting it in."

Rafiel sighed. "Probably overkill," he said. "We are not exactly the most advanced scientific police in the world." He took a bunch of turns, very fast, not so much seeking to be physically far away from the convenience store, as seeking to be in a place no one would associate with the convenience store. In no time at all, it seemed, he was driving through an upscale neighborhood of the type that used to be a suburb in the days when the main form of commuting was the trolley car. Eight blocks or so, in a direct shot from downtown Goldport, this neighborhood was all shaded, set-back, two- and three-floor houses, which managed to look much like Christmas cards under the snow. "As long as they don't catch you in the act of putting the coin in, or dialing them up, that's pretty much it. Oh, if it's anyone but McKnight, they'll exert due diligence, too, by going to the clerk and asking if they saw someone call."

"Unlikely," Tom said. "I was at the back of the store the whole time. Unless he can see through brick walls . . ."

"Yes," Rafiel said, and then, because the way that Tom was leaning forward over the seats was starting to give him visions of suddenly hitting a tree and ending up with Tom splattered all over his dashboard, "You know, we have laws about seat belts, in this state. As a policeman—"

Tom didn't answer. He just leaned back and buckled the seat belt. Then he made a sudden startled sound. "Kyrie," he said. "I haven't called Kyrie."

 

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Framed